Ah, yes. I'm in Germany, where the German never stops, and it's exactly like the feeling you have when you start a foreign film on the DVD player at home and lose the first scene entirely fiddling with the remote to get the subtitles to come on. But permanently. I wish to God I had thought to buy some kind of guide book, city map, phrase book before leaving Chicago. What am I gonna eat when my gum runs out? Oh, Lord, the things you never knew you loved: my taxi raced by a Dunkin' Donuts yesterday and my heart leapt out of my chest, slamming into the taxi window pane. D 'n' D! Starbucks? Is that a Starbucks?!
A few good things:
1. Ratatouille is viewable up to three times through. I watched it on the plane (three times).
2. Brussels is gorgeous in the dark (although leaving America at 3pm on Thursday was like being shot out of a canon into space. The daylight fades rapido.)
3. People here seem to think I'm Swedish.
4. Berlin weather is foul as expected but it's in the forties. Chicago: 0; Berlin: 1.
A few bad things:
1. Women in Germany leave the seat up on the toilet, or at least that's how it's done at the opera house; I'm getting the hang of this.
2. Germans will cut you off in line quicker than a cat fart. (Or, something to that effect: my grandma pulls out comments like this all the time and when I look at her in fear she says, "what?! You don't know that expression?")
3. I'm insane with loneliness. It's to be expected.
By the way, keep the "I have a friend in Germany, his/her number is" emails coming. Much appreciated. Love. Much love.
2 comments:
Sorry to hear that you're lonely (or that you were when you wrote this). And then it was so sad that there were no comments at the bottom of the blog. So here you go.
Ratatouille (tough word to spell! close your eyes and try it) is definitely a thrice-watchable masterpiece ("mousterpiece?"). (By the way, has anyone ever done a craps paper called "Der Monsterwerk [or Mousterwerk] in der Musik"?) Anyway, the point is not all that worth it, so I'll skip it. Just writing to say hi. Hi.
Okay, one more comment.
It's insane, if true, that women leave the seat up, since I was convinced by my German girlfriend that men pee sitting down.
(Apologies for writing "pee" on your blog.)
But since I started doing so before I got a chance to ask anyone (anyone German, that is, since my American friends were, predictably, no help) I had already been doing it for some weeks, and then was too ashamed to admit that I had been doing so should it turn out that my girlfriend had, after all, been pulling my leg.
Is it possible that the words male and female have just been, somehow, in one of the greatest historical accidents of all time, mistranslated?
Perhaps there's a more pertinent question to put to my "girlfriend"...
Post a Comment